Chapter 2

Having decided to alter my plans and accompany Johnny to Rhinebeck, I quickly dressed, packed, and checked out of the St. Regis. True to form, a car was waiting downstairs to take us up the Hudson, just as rain began to fall.

Johnny and I sprawled in the back of a long black limousine for the two-hour drive. As our ride swished up Park, I asked him, “Has Rhinebeck changed much?”

Johnny took off his jacket and put his feet up on the jump seat before he answered. “It’s still the same for the most part. A few improvements in the kitchen — upgraded stoves, fridges, countertops — but pretty much as you remember it. Stanley and Dagmar soldier on together. Stanley still wears a morning suit and is every inch a model of the English butler, but he now has a new helper, a young fellow named Simon, who looks after the more mundane tasks, like polishing silver. Simon also helps at table. The bell pulls have been replaced by electronic ringers.

“Dagmar rules the kitchen and cooks as well as ever. She looks forward to dinner parties, so she can order up a flock of help, but these have been less frequent. She has a permanent helper named Jane, who is also new. Oh, and Harry, the groundskeeper, is still there. He’s as crusty as ever and drives a new faster fleet of lawnmowers. The grounds look immaculate; you’ll see.”

“You know, I still dream of toast at breakfast in those silver racks and Dagmar’s famous Scotch broth for lunch. In my mind, Rhinebeck remains a mysterious and wonderful place.”

“It’s as mysterious as ever,” said Johnny, turning toward me. “As you know, Great-Aunt Eleanor, who built it, was into fortune-telling, prognostications, witchcraft, that sort of thing. I think those qualities rubbed off on the estate itself. Besides, she snared my grandfather, old John B. Dodge, using those arts, according to some. Others have said it was because she was damn good-looking with a bosom unmatched in her generation. I’d be inclined to the latter, but you never know.”

“Was Eleanor a fortune hunter?”

“Hardly. She came from a fine, upstanding banking family out of Philadelphia. Still, she was considered quite scandalous in her day. Churchmen were said to avoid her like the plague, either because she might tempt them down paths best left unexplored or because of her hankering for the occult. Which frightened them more was hard to say.

“After Alice was born and they endured several tumultuous years together, the two divorced, which did nothing to lessen Eleanor’s reputation. Unfortunately, she passed shortly thereafter, and Alice took up in the scandal department, where Eleanor left off.”

I nodded. “I’d say surpassed her, but I loved Alice growing up. She was always so glamorous.”

“She was, but under the surface, her life was messy. Her marriages all bombed, mostly because she was either steeped in her research or gallivanting with someone else. I doubt there was a man alive who could have hung on to her. Stories about her death continue to circulate although years have passed.”

“Ah yes. The famous ‘socialite dies under mysterious circumstances’ that sent everyone into a tizzy of speculation at the time.”

“Precisely, and the parents are still silent about what happened.”

“Do you think they know something?”

“I suspect they know more than they let on. I do try to get them to talk about it every now and again, but so far very little has been forthcoming. Mother changes the subject, and Father ignores the question entirely. He was quite close to Alice — maybe closer than anyone. I think her death is still a source of sorrow.”

Johnny looked out the window at the rain while I looked back at that time and marveled at how skillfully we had been kept in the dark. Johnny and I did not attend the funeral because such things were considered inappropriate for children. Years passed before we learned how sensational her death had been. It was not that we didn’t know her. We vacationed at her house and saw her regularly. We were in awe of her. In some ways, I was thankful we were left with only the happy memories of her alive.

Johnny stretched and said, “I don’t blame the parents for not discussing her death. It was a dark time. The press had a field day. ‘Plot thickens. Police called in’ — that sort of thing. The headlines were enough to sour anyone on the subject. On top of that, there was no will. Although much was spelled out in the many trust instruments that handled her finances, there was a significant bit not covered. I can hardly believe that her banking people didn’t force her to write one up, but such lapses weren’t particularly out of character. By the way, I hope I’m not boring you.”

“Hardly — her life has always been a point of fascination for me. I only wish I had known her better and when I was older. I could have appreciated her more, but I remember her fondly as someone larger than life and always there in the background watching us.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. She was something to be reckoned with. I have done a little digging. Not much, but some.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“Unfortunately, not a whole lot, but some things you may not know. Her peers in the academic world considered her to be an exacting and brilliant researcher, but those who knew her socially thought she was careless in her personal affairs. The Mellon bank handled most of her money, but many things fell through the cracks.

“Father said that when he took over her finances after she died, there were huge clumps of pending bills, from parking tickets to demands for payment from Van Cleef’s for diamond earrings. She had plenty of money. She just didn’t have time for what she considered life’s boring details. He ended up having to sort out the mess she left.”

“I bet that took a while,” I said.

“It did. She was always losing things. She misplaced a husband or two — left one in some remote location. He took years to return to civilization.”

“I remember that. Arthur Blain?”

“Yes, that was the one. Alice married him after she divorced Lord Bromley. She cut loose from Blain just before the rainy season in some South American jungle. He was stuck for months along with his party. They ran out of food, drank bad water. There were rumors of murder and cannibalism. He contracted some tropical disease like dengue fever and almost died — took forever to recover. He came back a wreck, begging for forgiveness for something he had done on the trip, but nothing doing. Alice had moved on. She wouldn’t even see him. He later told tales that she had wanted to kill him over something they found. She stole it and left him there to die.”

“I had not heard that. Do you think that’s true?”

“From what I understand, the guy was a real amateur in the jungle expedition game, so leaving him behind might be construed in some circles as a death sentence, but the reality was she left with only a single pack. He had most of the equipment and the crew. It was well timed. About what they found, I know nothing.”

“I’m amazed that we knew so little about her. All that we were ever told was that she was ‘away’ for long stretches of time.”

“Archeological expeditions were a major part of her life. She knew her way around a dig. She had the money to finance and support projects all over the world. I only found out about all this much later.

“As to what caused the break with Arthur, I discovered nothing concrete. There was a story going around at the time about him dallying with a native, gender unspecified, which could explain it. I can understand her leaving him, but she had plenty of partners of her own before and after, so I can’t see her being all high and mighty and bugging out in a huff. She had a secretive side, so there was probably more to it.”

“I thought she was supposed to be very overt. The papers painted her as one of those ‘what you see is what you get’ types, and often scantily clad at that.”

“The papers portrayed her that way with good reason. After the Blain debacle, she became much less discreet in her personal life. Her many affairs drove Father around the bend because I think he admired her and hated that her appetite for sex and scandal overshadowed a monster intellect that few could see. Her antics reflected badly on her, according to him, although I think she used that as a cover.”

“A cover for what?”

“Her private self, her collecting, and her research, I suppose. She was a noted Egyptologist with several works to her credit; however, she’d rather have people perceive her as a fool and a dilettante, when she was anything but. You knew her. She played on many levels.”

“I remember that she could read us like a book. She was always one step ahead of us in the prank department.”

“Exactly. Father tried to do his best by her in practical matters, but she was on a different channel than everyone else, tuned to what was happening in the outer cosmos as opposed to here on Earth.”

“That was the problem, I think.”

“Yes, and as a result, she left it to those around her to pick up the pieces. After her death, parts of her estate not covered by trusts had to be probated and became a matter of public record. The publicity frenzy started all over again. Father was the executor, and since he was the last surviving relative, most of the assets passed to him. I don’t know all the details. The parents can be very tight-lipped on financial matters and still are, but Rhinebeck, another apartment in New York besides the current one, an extensive library worthy of a major university, as well as a large chunk of financial assets passed to him and helped turn Dodge Capital into a much larger player.”

“I read about her in a magazine a while back. The article noted the suspicions surrounding her death, and how they keep persisting.”

“There are rumors of foul play still around. Father benefitted the most from her death, but he was away with mother in Capri when she died. The fact that he had more than enough money of his own should have silenced them, but still the stories continue. Alice had many followers who refused to believe she simply died.”

“Still, the circumstances were bizarre. She died at Rhinebeck in her bed reading an Egyptian Book of the Dead, according to one report.”

“Yes, and that’s true as far as I know. I remember one of the tabloids printing in big caps: ‘Socialite died from pharaoh’s curse. Mystery deepens.’ The facts must have seemed pretty weird at the time. I can tell you what I know and my own conclusions, if you like.”

“Please.”

“She was an academic as well as a socialite. Reading such a text was not out of character. I’m sure classics professors read Homer in the original Greek for fun all the time.”

“What about all the rumors of murder? No one told us about those for years.”

“The police found nothing suspicious. The book, according to the papers, was supposed to hold a clue, but few knew what an Egyptian Book of the Dead really was. The mere mention of the title created a sensation and sold papers.” Said Johnny.

“I’m still not sure I know what one is.”

“Most people don’t. In truth, there’s no single edition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The practice of using one started out as ‘for pharaohs only’ but proved so popular, high government officials began using them. Eventually anyone who could afford to have one drawn up got into the act. Each book was custom-made, at least up until a certain point in time, when they became standardized and consisted of any number of spells, of which a couple of hundred are known.

“Some were to preserve parts of the body and aid a person to navigate through the underworld. Some allowed one to come forth by day, have power over one’s enemies, and then return to the underworld at night like an ancient kind of vampire. There was even a spell to prevent one from consuming feces and urine.”

“Splendid. Just what every mummy needs.”

“The book was supposed to be placed in the sarcophagus of the deceased as a road map, survival guide, worst-case-scenario handbook, and travel diary all rolled into one so the dead could make their way successfully in the afterlife.”

“Was Alice simply reading one?”

“I don’t know. The book was taken in as evidence and then returned, but as to where it ended up, no one seems to know. We don’t have a lot of information. Maybe she wasn’t even reading it. Perhaps it was placed there by someone as a message, or a warning. The later books were all about being judged for one’s transgressions.”

“That sounds kind of sinister.”

“It just depends on how you look at it. I could make a possible case for murder, or I could make a case for accidental death in that she was trying out a tricky spell and things went south. Regardless, it’s all speculation. For now, the death certificate and the police investigation found nothing suspicious, and that’s the only concrete opinion there is. That doesn’t seem to stop the speculation. Even in death, she can’t stay out of the papers,” concluded Johnny.

I sighed. “It amazes me that mystery still surrounds her, but given the public’s thirst for gossip and scandal, it’s no wonder. She had quite a library. Maybe it might give us some hint as to what she was researching.”

“The library has to be seen to be believed. Remember, that area was off limits to us growing up, and still is to some degree. There are parts that are kept locked, but where there’s a will, there’s a way, and we might have some time to do some research. I wouldn’t mind getting into the locked parts. I overheard Mother and Father talking, and they said some insurance appraisal people had reported they hadn’t come across anything like it ever. The library is still unexplored as an avenue as far as I know. I doubt it will give up its secrets on a quick once-over, but we should at least see the damn thing.”

“Excellent. That’ll help pass the time before everyone starts showing up.”

“For sure. And speaking of things that are ancient and showing up like a mummy’s curse, Maw is arriving on Friday. She’ll be attended by her familiar, Bonnie.”

“Good God. Your grandmother looked old when I first met her. I can’t imagine what she looks like now.”

“Trust me — she’s very much alive, and more crone-like than ever. I suggest you gird your loins because dinners are going to be a source of entertainment not to be missed.”

“She hasn’t gone back to riding horses, has she?”

“Not lately. Since her last fall, several corporate boards have made giving up riding almost a condition for her continued participation. It was that or be faced with mass resignations. Healing apparently made her quite contentious.”

“I should think so. Well, the house will have quite a collection: Maw, Bonnie, Brunhilde, her parents, your parents, you, and me. Are there any more coming?”

“I haven’t a clue, but I’m hoping the mixture of guests will be so volatile that the trading report and the famous wine theft will be overshadowed by the fireworks that are bound to occur.”

“Let’s hope.”

“I’m going to grab a nap. Wake me when we get there.” Johnny closed his eyes while I thought about my spontaneous agreement to make this journey in the first place.

I felt nervous and unprepared for what lay ahead. The Dodge family had always tolerated, rather than welcomed, my presence — except for Johnny. He had fully accepted me into his life as a fellow conspirator from the start, and for that I owed him my unwavering support, and that explained my decision to some degree. But there were other considerations that gave me pause.

Rhinebeck embodied all that was precarious in my world as I grew up. The house was magnificent, but it had a dark side that would seep into my dreams and disturb my sleep, even now. Johnny, too, had sometimes been hard to bear. He was not always as forthcoming as he might have been, and often, I was unable to pierce the shell he used to shield his inner thoughts.

Right now, I knew he was troubled, but by what, I didn’t know. He was much like the house itself, wonderfully engaging on the surface, but beneath roiled dark currents. His was the struggle to prove himself in a family that gave no sympathy for failure. I had felt a similar pressure. There was rest at Rhinebeck but no ease. Performance was continually demanded, and only the best was met with even limited approval. I suppose this was harder on Johnny than me, being the son, yet here we were, once again, under scrutiny.

The collection of guests added another troubling element. Putting all of them in the same room was like dumping several large solitary wolverines into a single pen and standing back to see what would happen.

There was Maw, Johnny’s grandmother, the matriarch. She had been born wealthy and had married three times. The first marriage had been to John B. Dodge, out of which came John Senior. Divorce followed, along with a substantial settlement. Each of her next two husbands survived only a couple years of marriage before they expired, whether from being worn out or simply being beaten down was unknown. With each passing, her fortune increased several times over. The last marriage had been to a savings-and-loan pillar of the Southern states and had given her a daughter by the name of Bonnie.

To the family, she was known as Maw. I called her Mrs. Leland, after her last late husband. She caused me no end of nervousness. She lived for strife, and I did everything and anything to avoid it.

The competition and skirmishes between John Senior and his half-sister were legendary. Maw played one against the other. Although rich in his own right, John Senior could not resist one-upping his half-sister, and Bonnie was determined to see that Maw’s fortune was left to her in its entirety as payback for the upset and inconveniences her half-brother had caused her. Part of Maw’s estate included the apartment on Sixty-First and Fifth, where Mr. and Mrs. Dodge currently resided. Bonnie dreamed of the day she would be able to turn the Dodge faction out on the street once and for all.

Colossal amounts of money would change hands depending on who won the test of strength between the two siblings. Maw amused herself by coldly prodding whichever party slackened in their efforts to win the ultimate prize for being obedient and acquiescing to her every whim.

Although familial competitions and her wealth were of interest to her, they were not her passion. That fire had been reserved exclusively for her horses and her dogs. Those, she loved.

The woman I remembered was a formidable equestrian. Powerful horses with nasty dispositions that planned to toss their riders at the earliest opportunity would stand quiet, blowing with contentment, whenever she was in the saddle. I knew of only a handful of riders who could do that, and in that group, she had no equal.

To my mind, horses must have recognized her as their equine matriarch in another form. Not just horses but dogs too. At a command from her, a pack of yelping foxhounds would silence. Their tails would tuck between their legs as they milled about her in servile whimpering.

Animals obeyed her. Humans feared her and did the same.

She had once been an astonishing beauty, but a life of constant outdoor living had left her skin prematurely tanned and wrinkled, particularly her neck, like that of an old fur trapper of the American Northwest.

This aspect of her appearance had been my undoing when we were first introduced. Johnny and I had only just met and were getting to know each other. At that time, he was only too happy to take advantage of my prodigious gullibility. Johnny would tell me tales about her. He had me convinced that if I touched her, I would be infected by an affliction whose symptoms would leave me horribly wrinkled and my limbs deformed, to be followed by a long and painful death. Adults and blood relations were immune. I believed him and dreaded the day when Maw and I would meet.

We eventually did. My parents were there. I was told to go up and shake Maw’s hand. I stood before her and froze. I was prodded and cajoled while Maw sat watching me. Finally, I burst into tears and screamed out, “I don’t want to turn into a prune. I won’t shake her hand. I won’t!”

Time seemed to stand still after that outburst. My parents were horrified. The Dodges even more so. Maw, however, asked for an explanation. I knew the answer, but in my panic, I couldn’t speak. I was removed from the room in short order like a puppy that had just peed on an eighteenth-century carpet. I was sent to bed at one in the afternoon.

Johnny joined me in my misery shortly thereafter, consigned to the same fate. He said, “I’m sorry. That was not a nice thing to do. It won’t happen again. You didn’t tell on me to Maw, and that’s important. Friends?” He stuck out his hand.

I thought about his offer and decided to take it. “Friends,” I said. “But you should know that it wasn’t because I decided not to say anything. It was because I couldn’t.”

“Well, you didn’t, and that’s good enough for me. Anybody else would’ve told on me. No one can defy Maw when she wants to know something, and you did the next best thing. You were like a stone. I couldn’t have done that.”

That was the first time that Johnny admitted there was something that I could do better. We had made a start.

Later, he told me that Maw had pulled him aside after my removal and extracted the truth. Before he was sent off, she whispered in his ear that in time I would either stand with him or against him and that he would be better off to have me as a friend than an enemy. Enemies required constant vigilance, while friends needed none.

Then, and in the future, Johnny and I took such utterances that Maw delivered with the same respect given to oracles of earlier ages. Whether true or not, between us we thought she tapped into powers beyond those of mere mortals and that taking heed was the wisest course.

The relationship between Johnny and me changed permanently after that. He could and did ensnare me in many of his schemes, most of which caused me no end of trouble, but always as an equal and never again as the target.

Maw had treated us equally, and the entire household adopted this basis. Rewards and punishments were thereafter meted out in equal measure, regardless of who did what. We spent many an hour shoulder to shoulder, cleaning, mending, and generally helping the maids, butlers, and others who worked for the many Dodge households. We were no strangers to messy and tedious work, regardless of our sumptuous surroundings. We may have been born with silver spoons in our mouths, but unlike others of similar status, we sure learned to polish them, as Johnny would say.

Maw’s presence was going to add fuel to an already incendiary mixture of personalities. One could only wonder what the von Hofmanstals would make of it, and whether they had any idea what they were getting into.

I hoped they had some spirit, or I was pretty sure they would be eaten alive.